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Police Warn Bitcoin Extortion Letter Recipients Not To Pay

Farmington Police have told recipients of an extortion letter – which demands payment of USD $2,000 made in bitcoin – not to send payment but to contact local police instead. Farmington Police are so concerned about the pay or be killed letters that they've involved the FBI and Postal Inspector to investigate further.

The extortion letter reads:

XXX you do not know who we are, but we have been tracking you and your loved ones for a while now. We know your schedules. We know where you all live and spend your time. We also know how to kill any one of you without being caught. Now XXX, don’t panic. This isn’t personal. You did nothing to deserve this. You were just one of a handful of families unfortunate enough to draw our attention. However, nobody has to die. Allow us to explain.

You have until 12:00 PM on February 13, 2015 to pay us $2,000. If you do not comply with that simple demand, the following will happen: we will kill you, XXX, or someone else to whom you are close. Or you can simply pay us the $2,000. To make the payment do the following.

1. Open an account at any online Bitcoin exchange, such as Bitstamp.net or Coinbase.com

2. Deposit $2,000 into that account. Do not wait until the last minute to do this. It will likely take you about a week to open an account, get it verified, and process the transaction.

3. Use the entire $2,000, minus whatever small fee the exchange charges, to purchase Bitcoins on the exchange. If you are unsure about the process of buying Bitcoins, google it.

4. Withdrawal all Bitcoin you purchased to the following Bitcoin address: 19vcdWcV4J8bhH7j3igHZ5q4WGT2UX5V2S

5. Be sure to type all 34 characters of that Bitcoin address in EXACTLY. It is case sensitive. The first character is a number “one”, NOT a lowercase “L”.

6. You are finished. Breath easy, and live your life in peace knowing you will never have to deal with us again.

People who intend to kidnap, demand a bitcoin ransom or kill their victim, do. People who can't, send letters which net 0 bitcoin and operate at a loss if their time and the cost of postage is factored in. Police who stop and seize hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from their victims concern troll residents out of fear they will acquire a form of money which makes it more difficult for the police to steal.

More's to it, in principle someone armed with a copy of the yellow pages and a skateboard could distribute about five thousand of these things a day, simply dropping them by hand in the mailboxes of residential buildings etc.

Curious to see how teh ever so useful, valuable and worthy of public spending police will "protect teh public" once kids looking for supplemental allowance take to doing it routinely.

In all places and times kids have had the skateboards and phone books necessary to execute this plan, in theory at least. Their "need" for supplemental allowance is set very much apart from the gumption needed to pull it off, particularly if the anticipation of the homeowner popping out of the bushes has to be overcome. And quite a bit more so still if the cash has to be collected.

But even if we stick to btc vs. btc scenarios, it's far easier to set up a fresh e-mail address and sprinkle such threats freely and liberally throughout the [insert target demo].

Less face time, less exercise, even less fuss about smarmy civil servants.